My level 10 kobold gloomstalker is going on a solo hunt of a cr 9 creature, update!

[Rfkannen]

I posted a thread a while back asking for advice for this adventure, a couple people wanted to know how the adventure went, so I wrote it up here! I was originally going to reply to the old thread, but I remembered the rules of the forum and didn't want to necro. If you want to see the original post where I asked for advice you can find it here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ature-any-tips



The setup!
I play a Kobold gloom stalker ranger named Khial. Over the course of the campaign Khial has learned that he is the latest in a long line of nature heroes called the Harani, primal characters who wield a bow called windrunner, which is extremely powerful legacy weapon that needs certain rituals to unlock its full power. The first ritual my character had to do was slay an extremely powerful monster by himself.


A previous Harani had slain a powerful serpent called the adamantine cobra for their ritual, and there were rumors that the adamantine cobra had returned, so khial decided that he should go check it out and follow in the past Harani’s footsteps.

Khial pretty quickly figured out that the adamantine cobra had not returned, but some other serpentine monster was definitely in the area. He came across a kobold village that had been destroyed by what appeared to be a great storm, I asked my gm if it looked like damage a behir could cause, and she confirmed immediately that it did indeed look like a behir had been there, and even said I could look up the stat block, since my character would know what a behir was and what it could do! When I did that I was rightfully terrified, because a behir can do DOUBLE my character’s hitpoints in a single attack, enough to straight up kill him.

He found the place where the survivors of the behir attack had set up camp, and told them he was a hunter sent to kill the behir. They gave him some tips, like the locations of poisons he could use on his hunt, but they also gave khial some cryptic warnings that there was some sort of great beast in the area that khial should not hurt under any circumstances, and that he would know it when he saw it. I assumed that it was some sort of local nature deity.

The hunt begins!

I then spent a lot of time prepping. 1 week gathering poison and making traps. 1 week scouting for a good location for the fight. 1 week trailing the behir and learning its habits. On the 4th week I was going to scout its lair, but instead something odd happened.

The sky was clear, but there was a single giant stormcloud on the tip of a nearby mountain. As soon as the behir saw the cloud it got a look of rage and ran towards the mountain. Khial followed, but was much slower than the behir. When he got to the top, he saw an amazing sight; the behir was might a ginormous eagle made or lightning and thunder. Khial tried to help the eagle fight the behir, but he couldn’t do enough, and the eagle was slain. Khial cried about the death of such a noble creature, but also noticed that in its nest was a single giant egg, bigger than khial is!


Khial took the egg back to the village, and revealed he was the Harani. The kobolds were all extremely sad about the death of the eagle, which they revealed was sort of their local protection deity, and it had protected the village for generations. They also revealed that the creature was full on a person with the ability to talk, not just a dumb animal, so khial decided to adopt the egg as his son and raise it to be a fine upstanding member of society.

The battle!

Khial decided to kill the behir the next day. The area was based off of arches national park, and khial managed to find a 50 foot tall pillar to snipe the behir from. I knew I could do a lot of damage, but if it got to me I was dead, and if it could successfully run away, then the next fight it would ambush me and I would die. So I placed a trap for it. I placed the bait 400 feet away from the pillar I was on (the bait being a pronghorn stuffed to the brim with poison and psychedelics), I then placed bear traps on the path directly towards its lair, so if it ran away it would get struck for at least 1 turn.

The behir bought the bait and ate the pronghorn, and then it rolled a natural 1 for initiative, which the dm’s house rules mean it is surprised for the first round of combat (she rolled in the open, I was just EXTREMELY lucky!).

I then peppered it with various spells and arrows until it got within 100 feet of the tower, at which point the gm said it decided to run away since it was far below half health, and it ran into the traps, trapping it for a round and giving me enough time to finish it off with a final nat 20 zephyr strike!

After the fight, khial's bow changed, getting some extra cool powers and a lightning pattern on it! He told the kobolds the story of the entire campaign, and went off adventuring!



The new abilities for the bow are SUPER cool! Ill copy and paste them below! (if anyone has any tips for using this bow I would greatly appreciate them!)

Spoiler: windrunner!

Show

Weapon (longbow), artifact (requires attunement by a ranger, druid, or cleric.)
You have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.
While you are attuned to this weapon, you are proficient in longbows, and take no penalty from the Heavy property if it would apply to your character.
Additional powers of the weapon may be invoked by performing the requisite rituals. You must first invoke the Least Powers before invoking the Lesser Powers, and must invoke the Lesser Powers before invoking the Greater Powers.
Least Power Invocation. To invoke the Least Powers of Windrunner, you must echo the great deeds of the Harena past who slew great and deadly beasts, to protect the people of the desert from this danger. To invoke these powers, you must defeat a creature of CR 6 or higher in single combat, using Windrunner. Although you must be the only person to cause damage to the creature, your allies are permitted to give you enhancements, as well as distracting, confusing, or otherwise debuffing it. At least 10 points of damage must be dealt by an arrow loosed from Windrunner.
After defeating such a creature, you have proved to Windrunner and to the Chozashi Desert that you are a mighty warrior capable of great deeds. Windrunner gains the following properties:
Desert's Kiss. While attuned to Windrunner, you are immune to the effects of extreme heat.
Step of the Wind. While attuned to Windrunner, your walking speed increases by 10 feet.
Hunter's Strike. When rolling combat initiative, roll 1d10 and add the result to your total.
Windrunner also gains 4 charges. You may expend charges to produce the cast the following spells: Lightning Bolt (1 charge), Thunder Step (1 charge), or Dominate Beast (2 charges). For each additional charge spent, you can cast the spell at a higher level.
Windrunner regains 1d4 charges each dawn.
Chozashi's Anathema. If you ever perform an action that harms the Chozashi Desert (such as desecrating a natural site, polluting or despoiling the landscape, or needlessly slaughtering large numbers of animals), you lose all the special properties unlocked through the rituals, returning Windrunner to a simple +1 magical longbow, and must perform each ritual again to unlock those powers.
Proficiency with a longbow allows you to add your proficiency bonus to the attack roll for any attack you make with it.

Overall the adventure was a ton of fun and the advice was super helpful! I fought the behir at twilight, it hadn't occured to me before people said it that there was any option other than burning light or blinding darkness for my kobold! and the traps were a TON of help, a bahir dashing is extremely quick!

Hope you enjoyed reading it!

[Unoriginal]

I asked my gm if it looked like damage a behir could cause, and she confirmed immediately that it did indeed look like a behir had been there, and even said I could look up the stat block, since my character would know what a behir was and what it could do! When I did that I was rightfully terrified, because a behir can do DOUBLE my character’s hitpoints in a single attack, enough to straight up kill him.

Well Behirs are CR 11, so it seems the "CR 9 creature" part of the info was incorrect.

Just out of curiosity, how much HPs does your character have?

[Rfkannen]

Well Behirs are CR 11, so it seems the "CR 9 creature" part of the info was incorrect.

Just out of curiosity, how much HPs does your character have?

Yeah I made that post off of some incorrect assumptions, namely that I would be fighting the adamtine cobra the last harani had, which the gm mentioned was around cr 9 i think.

Not much, had some bad rolls. I can't find the pre level up hp but around 60 (I remember a behirs lightning at max was enough to do it)

[Unoriginal]

Yeah I made that post off of some incorrect assumptions, namely that I would be fighting the adamtine cobra the last harani had, which the gm mentioned was around cr 9 i think.

Well your Ranger's hunt was way harder and he still succeeded. Hopefully this will make him well-known in the setting.

Thanks for the update!

Not much, had some bad rolls. I can't find the pre level up hp but around 60 (I remember a behirs lightning at max was enough to do it)

Ouch. Rolled HPs are harsh.

[micahaphone]

Cool story! I feel bad for the bait deer, but at least it spent its last moments absolutely zonked out of it's mind

[XmonkTad]

This is a neat adventure, and I really like the setup steps. I'm not sure if I missed it, but how did you deal with the sunlight sensitivity?

[J-H]

He hunted at sundown/twilight.

Thanks for the update.